This is a series of questions about implementation with the Facebook open graph.
So, I make a query to the api as such: $this->facebook->api('me/namespace:action', 'post', $args );
My first query is where do posts appear? For example if I make a call with the parameters as follows:
$args = array(
//'message' => 'I just posted a pub review at PubJudge.com',
'website'=>'www.pubjudge.com',
'user'=>current_url(),
'link' => 'http://www.pubjudge.com/',
'caption' => 'Independent, social, pub reviews.'
);
The post appears on my timeline under 'Activity'
As far as I understand, if a user explicitly shares an action it will appear on the timeline. Is this correct?
Is "fb:explicitly_shared" a parameter that should be passed in the $args array?
Next comes Facebooks custom meta data. In this case my obect is a user, and I pass their URL through the $args array. Facebook then scrapes this array to get data from the custom meta tags on this link. Is this correct?
Does this url have to be the url from which the action is initiated? Can I not have a page on my website which simply generates custom meta tags based on a $_GET variable - this way I can keep all this complicated Facebook stuff independent of the main site.
Does anyone know why Facebook gets data for open graph actions like this anyway?
Finally because Facebook scrapes data like this I cannot test this functionality on my localhost. (I could do but it'd be very complex) What I have opted for instead is a testing.domain.com address to test my website and this functionality whilst having domain.com as my main live stable site.
I have also created two apps.. my main app, and a testing app because if I use my main app I have to change the site url to testing.domain.com which then breaks my stable site. Is this a suitable approach?
As far as I understand, if a user explicitly shares an action it will
appear on the timeline. Is this correct?
Yes, that's correct. You can find more information at the Facebook docs for explicit sharing. To be noted from the docs, you'll have to mark your action as able to explicitly share on your app dashboard and Facebook will have to approve it.
Is "fb:explicitly_shared" a parameter that should be passed in the
$args array?
Yes.
Next comes Facebooks custom meta data. In this case my obect is a
user, and I pass their URL through the $args array. Facebook then
scrapes this array to get data from the custom meta tags on this link.
Is this correct?
Yes, Facebook scrapes the URL you pass so they can get data from the OG tags at that link.
Does this url have to be the url from which the action is initiated?
Can I not have a page on my website which simply generates custom meta
tags based on a $_GET variable - this way I can keep all this
complicated Facebook stuff independent of the main site.
No, it does not have to be the url from which the action is generated. You can have a separate page on your website, and in fact you can even use javascript to redirect users who land on that page to a more appropriate page.
Does anyone know why Facebook gets data for open graph actions like
this anyway?
That's probably a deeper question than you realize. In short, they are trying to create a semantic web. The long answer would be an essay.
Finally because Facebook scrapes data like this I cannot test this
functionality on my localhost.
You can use reverse proxy which works in most cases (I've seen problems with photos if you are using a port for the reverse proxy). Not very complicated. Something like the following works well:
ssh -nN -f -R externalhost.com:49080:localhost:80 your#credentials.biz
I have also created two apps.. my main app, and a testing app because
if I use my main app I have to change the site url to
testing.domain.com which then breaks my stable site. Is this a
suitable approach?
Yes, that's normal. We typically have a development app (localhost), a staging app (external host for testing), and a production app.
Related
I have been reading about using Open Graph (OG) meta tags to improve the way facebook works with your website. I have read two tutorials that say to create an application and use the application ID. But I am not developing an application, all I have is a business page... Can I just the page ID?
Can anybody also point out any good, simple resources around the using OG in my website?
Thanks
The sharer.php method (which is deprecated) allows you to post without an application. The feed/post method appears to require an app_id, though it's possible that there's some way around that. On the bright side, there's nothing complex about creating an application, so, if that's what you must do, I'd say just do it :)
Here is an example of how it works *with an app using the feed/post method (you'll need to click the "Post to feed" link at the top (yes I know it doesn't look like a link!).
and Here is the same exact example only using Sharer (notice that this time it's pointing at a slightly different url (drawImageForFB2.php instead of drawImageForFB4.php).
I use a php to render the tags based on the vidId that I collect but that's neither here nor there... you could just as easily have this as a static HTML page.
The innards of the OG tag are just about identical and the app_id tag in the OG is entirely optional as it pertains to the second example).
Oh, and addthis does it using the dialog api which looks like this
https://www.facebook.com/dialog/feed?redirect_uri=http://s7.addthis.com/static/postshare/c00.html&app_id=140586622674265&link=http://support.addthis.com/customer/portal/articles/381222-optimize-facebook-sharing#.UQ8bBJM9KQk.facebook&name=Optimize%20Facebook%20Sharing&description=
Example: Bejeweled Blitz frequently runs events and promotions that, when clicked, take you to their app page. Once there, the app can see that the page was reached by following the promotional link and forks over the reward.
How is this done? What do I need to do to implement a similar feature? To my knowledge the parent URL is out of bounds due to the domains being different (Facebook vs. my app), so how is the message passed to the app?
Every app (Canvas, Page tab)
You can get data by passing an app_data parameter to any URL linking to a Facebook app. This parameter value will then be added to the signed_request.
As so, this url http://facebook.com/mypage/app_123?app_data=promotion12 will allow you to get promotion12 via the signed_request.
In PHP, this would give you something like this:
$signed_request = $facebook->getSignedRequest();
$app_data = $signed_request['app_data'];
Of course, you could pass any string by there; for example it could be a JSON string.
That's really the heart of getting data from outside to inside an app.
Hope this help you out!
Canvas app
In Canvas app however, it's much simpler, every query parameter will be passed to the app.
So, http://apps.facebook.com/myapp?somedata=hey can be get via:
$data = $_GET['somedata'];
Facebook will just append those parameter to the iframe URL.
Docs
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/login/signed-request/ (was pretty hard to find, damn FB documentation)
This is done with the query parameters passed in the URL that users click on. A clear example is DoubleDownCasino sharing an URL for their users to click on. The link is:
http://apps.facebook.com/doubledowncasino/?pid=PNNTDP&target_url=pid%3APNNTDP
What DoubleDownCasino probably does is once their canvas app loads, they parse the URL for the query params and the pid and target_url parameters help determine what type of "reward" the user gets. Once they redeem it, clicking the same URL won't get the reward again because it can check if the user has already redeemed the offer with the given pid and target_url.
Your question:
Example: Bejeweled Blitz frequently runs events and promotions that, when clicked, take you to their app page. Once there, the app can see that the page was reached by following the promotional link and forks over the reward.
What I explained above is exactly how Bejweled Blitz does it in this post. If you follow through the bit.ly short URL, the URL is:
http://apps.facebook.com/bejeweledblitz/?zgift=0/eTtVUuhF5ipdJmO1jlDhr96MtKjp1NYflJrcOddB6iZDH1y96K%2Bml6gC0%2B5yVN
So answering your question, Bejeweled Blitz run promotions and rewards by appending query parameters, which in this case is zgift, which they can then parse in their app by getting the current URL the user is hitting.
I have a page inside a facebook application that is an opengraph object, when I post a custom action on this object to facebook from my app it is posted right, but when I use a facebook social plugin such as like and like that object it is not posted as that object but instead the object of my facebook application is posted on the timeline... so my question here is Can an in-app object only be posted through an opengraph action?
Nope, new OpenGraph object will be created or data will be updated for existing one once Facebook linter crawl your page to get data this will happen in several cases:
OpenGraph action referencing object published
Like button clicked for specific URL
Link to your page shared on Facebook (in direct way or via any dialogs using link, etc).
Your Like button is probably linked not to your real application URL but to URL within Facebook resulting in different Pages parsed by Facebook on Like Button click and OpenGraph action publishing.
I assume that your like button pointing to Application Tab Canvas or Application Page since links to regular application's canvas parsed correctly by Facebook.
Update:
Seems like the issue with OpenGraph tags is related to the fact that your application returning 404 (Not Found status code) for URL you provided and only returns data for HTTP (but not HTTPS) requests. If error code is returned the cached data is preserved and will not be updated until correct status code returned.
Update 2:
As you've provided real URL it's became clear that you get details for your application instead of actual page because of redirect for all unauthorized users, which lead to inability to rich the real OpenGraph data by Facebook linter.
BTW, You should be aware that every OpenGraph object MUST have publicly accessible URL.
My site has a feed system and when user clicks on any one of those feed snippets (the object), I want the action to be publish in their Facebook news feed. So I'm really confused on how to go about it because as far as I'm aware this is how you post actions on Facebook's JavaScript SDK:
FB.api('/me/namespace:action?object=url','post')
How do you dynamically change the properties of the object? Are there parameters you can send? As far as I'm concerned, Facebook asks you to give pass a URL and it'll grab the <meta> information from that URL?
Am I supposed to perform a GET request with my own server and change the meta tags dynamically. This sounds like more work than it needs to be. For example, what if the feed includes a paragraph of text, it'll be impractical for me to post that as a get request and then urldecode the entire thing.
I'm not sure I totally understand your question, but...
You can dynamically change the tags for facebook og: properties, but you have to do it before the page loads (e.g. using PHP as opposed to javascript). After you send the post using the javascript SDK, facebook crawls the page and looks for the info in the og: meta tags.
We are working on a facebook-app with lots of dynamic pages. As the app is embedded in a tab on a facebook page, the urls contain a get-parameter to address the correct tab/app. We want to implement like- and send-buttons for several pages within our app, but facebook seems to dump all get-parameters from urls within facebook. As the result all like- and send-buttons point to the facebook-page itself instead of the tab.
Does anybody now any workaround? We already tried redirects via an external sefor facebook urls only.rver but facebook seems to evaluate the links on click of the like-/send-button (and seems to follow all sort of redirects).
UPDATE:
Here is an example of a problematic url:
https://www.facebook.com/smartmobil.de?sk=app_171502639574871
UPDATE:
The problem seems to be independant of url get-parameters. It seems that the like-button does not work with any url starting with www.facebook.com
When used in a like-button everything behind the ? will be dumped. This seems to happen for facebook urls only.
Best workaround so far is to point your like buttons at external (non-facebook canvas) urls.
To make this work, you need to do some conditional redirecting to get the user back into your canvas URL. You can either use a client side javascript redirect:
<script>
window.location = 'http://apps.facebook.com/yourcanvasname/foo/bar';
</script>
Or you can do a server side redirect based on the useragent string. Basically, if the useragent contains 'facebookexternalhit' then render a basic HTML page containing OG tags, if not, redirect to the canvas URL.
Doing this means the Facebook sharescraper/linter won't follow any redirects back to the canvas URL, but any user that arrives at your URL will get back to Canvas.
i'm too searching for a solution to control the custom page tab's content through a get parameter (app_data). I still don't have a solution but here at least the reason why all www.facebook.com links are srtiped out of get params. Here at bottom the developer explains why.
Unfortunately I don't think what you are trying to do is possible. Posting a like programmatically requires you to specify a Facebook content ID or alias. This won't work for you because tabs to not seem to have an exposed content ID of their own, and instead use the Page's content ID with an additional parameter which you can't use with the graph.
Liking external links and other content that does not have an ID programmatically is prohibited. With an external URL, the first like of an unrecognised URL creates a new Facebook page for those likes to be represented on (which is the issue I've given up trying to fight), but presumably the presence of your Page's content ID alias (www.facebook.com/smartmobil.de) in the url is making Facebook choose you page rather than creating a new one.
The only suggestion I can think of this late at night is to target an external URL that performs a redirect via Javascript, rather than on the server, but Facebook may be wise to that too and I'm afraid I'm going to bed rather than testing it :)